Syllabus:- GS II ( Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes; mechanisms, laws, institutions and Bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of these vulnerable sections)
The case for reservations for women and transgender persons in State jobs and higher education
- The Bihar government recently announced 33% horizontal reservation for women in State engineering and medical colleges.
- While reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) is referred to as vertical reservation, horizontal reservation refers to the equal opportunity provided to other categories of beneficiaries, such as women, veterans, the transgender community, and individuals with disabilities, cutting through the vertical categories.
- Bihar at present has 60% reservation in the State higher educational institutions along the six vertical categories (SCs, STs, EWS and so on).
- The newly announced reservation for women in engineering and medical seats will not be in addition to this; it will instead be distributed across all the vertical categories, including the non-reserved 40% seats open to all.
For example, if an engineering college has 100 reserved seats for STs, 33 of those seats will have to be filled with ST women. Article 15(3) of the Constitution allows governments to make special provisions for women and children.
Dropping out of the workforce
- India’s female labour force participation (FLFP) rate is consistently declining and is worryingly low. World Bank data show that the FLFP came down to 21% in 2019 from 31.79% in 2005.
- As per the Bihar Economic Survey 2019-20, the State’s FLFP rate was abysmal compared to the all-India average. Only 6.4% and 3.9% women were employed in the urban and rural areas of Bihar compared to the all-India figures of 20.4% and 24.6% respectively.
- The FLFP rate needs to be treated cautiously though as it doesn’t take into account unpaid work (majorly performed by women) or the role played by social barriers like caste in blocking employment opportunities for women like owning a shop.
Patriarchal control of women and systemic gender discrimination cannot be defeated by government intervention alone; State welfare schemes can go a long way in challenging them. The Bihar government needs to work towards reducing the female and male school dropout rate and ensure quality education at the primary and secondary level. In addition, initiatives like reservation of seats, when implemented properly, could become an important driver for improving the FLFP.
Improving representation
- In the last three decades, Bihar has implemented various initiatives to empower women and improve their representation in various fields. When Lalu Prasad was the Chief Minister in 1992, Bihar had announced two consecutive days of menstrual leave for women employees in government services.
- In 2006, under Nitish Kumar, Bihar became the first State to reserve 50% seats for women in Panchayati Raj institutions even though the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution, which came into force in 1993, mandated only one-third seats for them. This was later imitated by several other States such as Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Chhattisgarh.
- In 2013, the Bihar government made a provision for 50% reservation for women in cooperative societies and reserved 35% seats for them in police recruitment. The second initiative led to a swift jump in the number of women officers in the police department to 25.3% in 2020, more than double the national average of 10.3%, from 3.3% in 2015.
- In 2016, the government extended the 35% reservation for women to all government jobs in Bihar for which direct recruitment is made.
In 2006, a scheme called the Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojana was launched for Class 9 and 10 girl students. This was India’s first scaled up conditional cash transfer programme for secondary education of girls.
The enrolment of girl students went up after this scheme. The Bihar government also provides ₹50,000 in installments to girl students to support their studies and other needs till graduation under the Mukhyamantri Kanya Utthan Yojana.
This is an incentive-based scheme to encourage girls to complete education and delay marriage. According to the National Family Health Survey-5, the State’s literacy rate among girl children rose to 61.1% in 2019-20 from 56.9% in 2015-16.
More jobs for women
While the Bihar government has taken some laudable steps for the empowerment of women, the low female literacy rate and FLFP rate are of concern.
One of the important factors for the low FLFP rate is the lack of employment opportunities for women after matriculation and graduation.
The India Human Development Survey-II found that women with low levels of education and from rural areas are relatively more active in the labour market compared to women with middle or high school education. Therefore, the Bihar government needs to ensure that women don’t fall out of the labour market as they become more educationally qualified.
One way this can be done is by filling up pending vacancies in the health sector, police force, teaching and other government departments as at least 35% of these posts will go to women. The government should also do away with hiring workers on contract and make all the current contractual workers permanent.
Evidence points out that increasing women’s participation in the workforce to the level of men boosts the economy. In light of this, it is important for the government to make more and more jobs available for women.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.